Contributors

Cynthia Atkins received an MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. Her first collection of poems, “Psyche’s Weathers” (Wordtech, 2007) was recently featured on Verse Daily, and reviewed in Poets’ Quarterly, Winter 2011. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals including, AMERICAN LETTERS & COMMENTARY, BLOOMSBURY REVIEW, BOMB, THE BROOME REVIEW, CAKETRAIN, COLD MOUNTAIN REVIEW, DENVER QUARTERLY, GOOD FOOT, HARPUR PALATE, INERTIA, THE JOURNAL, NEW YORK QUARTERLY, NORTH DAKOTA QUARTERLY, SENECA REVIEW, SOU’WESTER, and VALPARAISO REVIEW, and nominated for a 2011 For a Pushcart Prize. Atkins currently lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County, VA, teaches creative writing and literature, most recently at Roanoke College.

Leesa Cross-Smith is a writer and homemaker with a BA in English from the University of Louisville. She lives in Kentucky with her bearded husband and their two children. Her work has appeared in Storychord and The Rumpus. She can be found online at LeesaCrossSmith.com.

Jim Davis is a graduate of Knox College and now lives, writes and paints in Chicago. Jim edits the North Chicago Review, and will be appearing as the feature artist for the upcoming issue of Palooka Magazine. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in After Hours, Blue Mesa Review, Poetry Quarterly, The Ante Review, Chiron Review, and Contemporary American Voices, among others. www.jimdavispoetry.com

Christine Fadden roams around. Her work appears or is forthcoming in New South, Joyland, Storyglossia, decomP, the Citron Review, On Earth As it Is, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and Jentel, and holds a degree from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

Krista Franklin is a poet and visual artist from Dayton, OH who lives and works in Chicago. Her poetry and mixed medium collages have been published in lifestyle and literary journals such as Coon Bidness, Copper Nickel, RATTLE, Indiana Review, Ecotone, Clam and Callaloo, and in the anthologies Encyclopedia Vol. II, F-K and Gathering Ground. Her visual art has been featured on the covers of award-winning books, and exhibited nationally in solo and group exhibitions. Franklin is a Cave Canem Fellow, a co-founder of 2nd Sun Salon, a community meeting space for writers, visual and performance artists, musicians and scholars, and a teaching artist for Young Chicago Authors, Neighborhood Writing Alliance, and numerous organizations in the city of Chicago.

Faith Gardner lives in Oakland and has stories in or forthcoming in places like ZYZZYVA, PANK and Emprise Review. Find her at faithgardner.com.

William Henderson works as a freelance writer, editor, and copyeditor, and is a full-time father to his children, Avery and Aurora. He has written a memoir, House of Cards, from which “A Test of Visual Acuity” is drawn, and he remains nearsighted. He can be reached at wil329@yahoo.com, on Twitter @Avesdad, and through his blog, HendersonHouseofCards.wordpress.com.

Jessica Hollander earned her MFA from the University of Alabama in 2011. Her recent and forthcoming work includes fiction in the Cincinnati Review, The Journal, Pank, Web Conjunctions, and West Branch. You can visit her at jessicahollanderwriter.com.

V. Jo Hsu is an M.F.A. candidate at Pennsylvania State University. She has worked for Our Stories Literary Journal and Foundry Literary + Media in New York City. Her fiction has appeared in TINGE Magazine as well as The Rice Review. She has written reviews for Pleiades, Green Mountains Review, Fiction Writers Review, and Lambda Literary Review. She is grateful for the support of her mentors, her colleagues, and her family, and she hopes to prove worthy of their continued faith.

Amorak Huey is a former newspaper reporter and editor who now teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. His poems have appeared this year in The Southern Review, Subtropics, Indiana Review and other journals.

Links to Rose Hunter’s writing can be found at “Whoever Brought Me Here Will Have To Take Me Home.” Her book of poetry, to the river, was published in 2010 by Artistically Declined Press. She is the editor of the poetry journal YB, and lives in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. She was engaged in an obsessive-compulsive attempt to write one hundred “You As” poems, but it ended up topping out at around sixty.

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins currently lives and writes in Albert Lea, MN with her husband and no children. She is the poetry editor for Stymie and blogs for Specter Lit Mag. Look for her poems in Beloit Poetry Journal, Potomac Review, elimae, decomP, PANK, and elsewhere.

Susan Johnson holds an MFA and PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she teaches writing. Her first book Impossible Is Nothing is coming out this June from Finishing Line Press.

Priyanka Joseph has been a student of English Literature, Political Science and Public Administration in both India and the US. She received a Fulbright scholarship for Creative Writing in 2005. Her work has appeared in Tehelka magazine, Short, Fast & Deadly and on Ultra Violet. She was counted among the finalists in the 2009 Perigee Fiction Contest judged by James Brown. Disillusioned by the DC non-profit world, she has given up the desk-job approach and is currently working on an alternate history graphic novel, a chapbook of apocalyptic love poems and expanding her fiction portfolio, while looking for freelance writing work.

Jen Knox is a professor of English at San Antonio College. She is the author ofTo Begin Again (2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards winner, short story category), and her shorter works have appeared or are forthcoming in Annalemma, Eclectic Flash, Gargoyle, Narrative Magazine, Short Story America, Superstition Review and elsewhere. For more about Jen, visit her website here: http://www.jenknox.com

Sam Katzwas born in Korea and grew up outside of Philadelphia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Literary Magazine, The Good Men Project, Grey Sparrow Journal, and Kartika Review. He earned a degree in economics from Brandeis and an MFA from The New School, and now reads for One Story andteaches in the Integrative Studies department at La Salle University.

Tyler Lacoma lives in Bend, Oregon and writes articles on a variety of topics, including spirituals, the environment, business and fiction.

Meghan Lamb co-edits the online magazine Red Lightbulbs alongside her husband, Russ Woods. Her work can be found in apt, Spork, Pear Noir!, Metazen, Pank, Nano Fiction, elimae, and a few other places.

Peter LaBerge is a sixteen year old up-and-coming writer. Though he was only recently introduced to creative writing, his poetry has been featured over 100 times, in venues such as Burnt Bridge, Leaf Garden, The delinquent, and The Blue Pencil Online. Five of his poems were recognized in the 2011 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and he is the runner up for the 2011 Elizabeth Bishop Prize in Verse. He also edits The Adroit Journal (www.adroit.co.nr), a literary magazine he created to benefit charity.

Jim Meirose’s work has appeared in many leading literary magazines and journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, Xavier Review, New Orleans Review, and Witness. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Shirley Jackson awards and was short-listed for the O. Henry awards. A chapbook of his short work is available from Burning River and his novel Claire is available from Amazon.com.

Adam Moorad is the author of Prayerbook (wft pwm, 2010), I Went To The Desert (Thunderclap Press, 2010), Oikos (nonpress, 2010), Book of Revelations (Artistically Declined Press, 2011), and Piñata (propaganda press, 2011). He lives in Brooklyn. Visit him here: adamadamadamadamadam.blogspot.com

Gary Percesepe is Associate Editor at BLIP Magazine (formerly Mississippi Review), and a Contributor at The Nervous Breakdown. His short stories, poems, essays, reviews, and interviews have been widely published or are forthcoming in Story Quarterly, N + 1, Salon, Mississippi Review, Antioch Review, Pirene’s Fountain, The Millions, Atticus Review, Houston Literary Review, Westchester Review, The Nervous Breakdown, Rumpus, Pank, Bluestem, Bull, Word Riot, Moon Milk Review, Fogged Clarity, Necessary Fiction, Frigg, Twelve Stories, Negative Suck, and other places. He is the author of four books in philosophy and an epistolary novel with Susan Tepper, What May Have Been: Letters of Jackson Pollock and Dori G, (Cervana Barva Press). He recently completed his second novel, Leaving Telluride, set in Telluride, Colorado.

Karen Pickell is pursuing a Master of Arts in Professional Writing at Kennesaw State University outside of Atlanta. Her essay “An Ordinary Difference” is included in the charity anthology Oil and Water . . . and Other Things That Don’t Mix.

Gary Presley is the author of Seven Wheelchairs: A Life beyond Polio (The University of Iowa Press, Fall 2008). His essays have appeared in venues as diverse as Salon, The New York Times, Fringe Magazine, and Brevity. He also regularly reviews for Kirkus. He blogs regularly at www.garypresley.com .

Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born poet who immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Her poems and translations have appeared in 5 a.m., Ascent, Meridian,Mudfish, Harpur Palate, Exquisite Corpse, The Fourth River, Ezra, Zoland Poetry,Cutthroat, and many others. She is the author of two poetry collections: Eternity’s Orthography (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and To Part Is to Die a Little, forthcoming from Červená Barva Press. She also co-edited and co-translated TheVanishing Point That Whistles, an Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Poetry, forthcoming from Talisman Publishing (2011). She lives in New Jersey and works in New York for a major publishing company.

Mather Schneider was born in Peoria, Illinois in 1970. He now lives in Tucson, Arizona, where he is happily married to a Mexican woman. He has one book of poetry out called DROUGHT RESISTANT STRAIN from Interior Noise Press and another forthcoming very soon from NYQ Press called HE TOOK A CAB. His stories and poems have been seen in the small press since 1993.

David Frederick Thomas lives with his wife and family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he is an undergraduate at Temple University. An assistant editor at Barrelhouse Magazine, his short fiction has appeared in PANK, Storyglossia and The Blotter.

Ann Wahlman spent her formative years in New England. She holds a BA in Psychology from The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC and is currently pursuing an MA in Writing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where she has lived for the past eight years. She plans to graduate in the spring. Ann has work forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine.

Carolyn Zaikowski feels very grateful that her creative and critical works have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as PANK, NOO Journal, Monkey Puzzle, Eleven Eleven Journal, Nebula: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship, West Wind Review, The Kenneth Patchen Newsletter, esque, Get Fresh Magazine, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University and edits the online literary journal Dinosaur Bees. She currently lives in Thailand. Visit her at liferoar.wordpress.com.